The book Arran; - Cook Clan

THE BOOK OF ARRAN
III
Islands have a type of history of their own, depending
on their size, nature, and position with respect to large areas.
Arran is a comparatively large island in an enclosed sea,
but not large enough to be an independent centre of popula-
tion or culture. It must borrow both people and civilisa-
tion from its neighbourhood, from which again it will be the
first stage in expansion. Overflow from either side, from
Scotland or from Ireland, in the earlier times, will have its
first halting-place on the nearest islands or intervening peninsulas.
In such a place as Arran these overflows will thus
meet and probably commingle, as they did ; to which must
be added a possible stream by the highway of the sea, which
will have the same destiny, as occurred twice in Arran's
history. Thus we may be prepared for Arran as a mixingpot
of peoples and cultures, which in fact it was. The
island, from this point of view, being small, there being no
room to maintain quarrel nor natural riches sufficient to
perpetuate social distinctions, the sharp geographical definition
and the climatic conditions will work towards the forma-
tion of a uniform type. The geographic control surpasses
the others, wears down differences, compacts the peoples ;
however complex the racial or cultural ingredients, the island
mould, in the long run, turns them out one whole. Which
of the many influences will ultimately colour the mass depends
again upon the geographical conditions. And though
in latitude Arran belongs to southern Scotland, it is much
farther from the mainland than from the peninsula of Kintyre
—three miles from the nearest point of the latter and over
nine at least from the coast of Ayrshire ;
while Kintyre in
its turn came to be, historically, but a long stepping-stone
from Ireland. For a trading people, too, making islands
halting-places and coasting for short, sheltered, voyages in
fair weather, Arran is markedly convenient on the Clyde
route leading to the heart of central Scotland. In historic